My family thought this book was very cute and fun. My 6 year old enjoyed the story and thought it was fun to find the mommy pumpkin on each page. My 2 year old didn't seem interested in the story, but did love the adorable illustrations and started saying "pumpoo!" (his new word for pumpkin) largely thanks to reading this book and playing with some cute little real pumpkins I bought for him at the grocery store. I don't think imagining what you might do on Halloween is concrete enough of a concept for many 2 year olds, but I think most will enjoy the illustrations as much as my son did. I love that The Runaway Pumpkin is full of seasonal Halloweeny fun but nothing spooky or scary (the little pumpkin in the book does have some friends who are ghosts and mummies and such, but they're almost as adorable as he is!).

My 6 year old says "Anyone who likes pumpkins and Halloween would like this book. They should put it online so more mommies can read it to their kids."

And chose this as his favorite page:

Pros

Adorable

Seasonal but not scary

Encourages family spending time together

Cons

Plot too complex for toddlers

The bottom line

Cheerful picture book full of non-scary Halloween fun, highly recommended for the 3-6 year old crowd

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

I got the chance to try out a fun new baby care product targeted at Dads and I can't wait to tell you about it! It's called the Daddy Caddy and this is the one we got to try:

What it is

A cool new way for dads (and anyone else!) to carry the necessities for caring for a little one for a short while.

Who makes it

Go Mama Go Designs, the makers of Wonder Bumpers (bumpers for individual crib bars so they provide padding but no suffocation risk!)

Our impressions

I love how sturdy and well constructed the Daddy Caddyis. I can definitely tell it's not going to like fall apart after its only been used a few times. At first I was concerned with how small it is, but it does fit the smallest size package of wipes plus a few diapers (my son wears size 4 now when he uses disposables) so I think it'd work great for anytime I left my younger son with my husband or had grandma and grandpa babysit for a few hours. My husband actually used it while I went to a baby shower for a relative and it worked really well for him.

My husband liked the design of it and the huge carbiner, which he thought could be handy for hooking to the jogging stroller if they went for a run or to his belt loop for a hike. We also like the little pocket that could fit a slim cell phone or a little cash or something else along those lines. And it was brilliant of them to make the inside lining waterproof so anything that needs to be stashed in there can (like if my husband really was hiking in the woods and didn't have anywhere to throw away a used diaper and wipe for a while!)

We chose the blue canvas, but all of the colors are very dad friendly. And the black leather one looks so luxurious!

Pros

Sturdy

Manly

Water resistant lining

Cons

Only fits small package of wipes

The bottom line

A deceptively small bag just right for holding diapering necessities for a short adventure!

Get it

You can purchase the Daddy Caddy for $19.99 to $29.99 at time of posting this review.

Thank you to GoMamaGo Designs for providing a sample for review purposes. I received no other compensation for this post.

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Fox announced the 10 candidates who will be debating in the first GOP debate of this election season, Thursday at 9pm Eastern.

Donald Trump

Jeb Bush

Scott Walker

Mike Huckabee

Ben Carson

Ted Cruz

Marco Rubio

Rand Paul

Chris Christie

John Kasich

The list does contain my top choices at this point, but also some candidates I don't consider viable or desirable and that I'm a little surprised to see in the top 10. It'll be interesting to see whether this debate helps the cream rise or if the nations response to this field of candidates will keep surprising me. Or both!

Monday, July 20, 2015

My son chose Star Wars as his theme for his 6th birthday celebration, so I wanted to make a special cake to go with that theme. When he requested marble cake, the idea of a Galaxy cake swirled with bright colors like fun galaxy print fabric I've seen recently instantly popped in my head. I couldn't find anything quite like it online though, so I created my own technique and am excited to share it with you!

My inspiration pic was this gorgeous nebula, the Eagle Nebula, photographed by Sid Leach, who has lots of other absolutely stunning pictures on his site that I highly recommend checking out. You may even find a nebula you like better for your cake inspiration!

And here's how the cake turned out:

What you need

Your favorite white cake recipe (minus a 1/4 cup of flour). I used this one from Joy of Baking, one of my favorite recipe blogs!

1/4 cup dark cocoa powder

Food coloring (I used red, yellow, blue, and green liquid food coloring, but I'm sure gel food coloring would work too, and black food coloring would probably be a good addition, especially if you want your cake to be darker than mine!)

Sprinkles (I recommend star shaped ones, and I also used silver ones!)

What you do

First, preheat your oven and make the cake batter according to your recipe, but leave out 1/2 cup of flour.

Separate the batter evenly into two bowls.

Add 1/4 cup flour to the batter that will be vanilla

Add 1/4 cup dark cocoa powder to the batter that will be chocolate

Take a few 1/4 to 1/2 cup portions of batter from the vanilla half and place in separate bowls.

Add blue food coloring to the main vanilla batter (or whatever color you want the main part of your nebula to be!), and color the smaller portions as desired. I did purple, lime, and a tiny bit of orange. I also added a few drops of blue and red to the chocolate portion.

Line round cake pans with parchment paper and spray with cooking spray

Drop batter a bit at a time, alternating colors, like you would for a zebra cake. I did about 1/3 cup chocolate and blue, and a few spoonfuls of the other colors at a time. I mostly dropped each bit right on top of the part below, but for the accent colors like orange I did just put them out on the edge randomly a couple times.

Shake the pan a little to level out the batter and use a knife to swirl the batter. I made one big swirl and then a couple side swirls on mine. Here's how they looked after swirling:

Bake according to recipe directions. For the recipe I used, that was 30 minutes at 350 degrees. This is how they looked fresh out of the oven:

To frost, I used fudgey dark chocolate buttercream frosting between the two layers and on top. I recommend adding a generous portion of star sprinkles to the middle layer--this time I put most of my star sprinkles directly in the batter and they were no longer recognizable after baking. Then frost the top as desired, and enjoy!

They are so cute!! I love the cheerful colors, the whimsical styling, and the wild curly hair. I enlisted the aid of my 4 year old niece to review them, and she too tends towards wild curly hair and whimsical styling, so I knew they'd be a big hit. The size of them makes them easily portable and perfect as car toys or for Church, or anywhere else that small toys you can play with discretely in your lap might be desired. I do like that they are much larger than the old school Polly Pockets I played with in the 90's because they'd be much harder to lose and much easier to see that they're in the path of a younger sibling in time to grab it and move it! They are small enough to be a choking hazard though so I definitely agree with the manufacturers recomendation of 4&up.

One of the things I checked was whether the hair is braidable and it defintely is, which is a huge plus because braiding doll hair was one of my favorite things when I was in elementary school. Here's a braid I did quickly:

And I'm pretty sure you could do an even better job if you went a little more slowly and carefully!

My niece said her favorite part is "that they are so cute". She likes how small Lalaloopsy Tiniesare, and that they fit in with her other dolls and dollhouse furniture.. She also likes that they have curly hair like she does! Her favorite one is the fairy one, of course!

Pros

Cute

Stylable hair

Good size for little hands and pockets

Cons

Choking hazard

Get it

You can find Lalaloopsy Tinies at a variety of brick and mortar and online toy retailers. They are $10.99 for a set on Amazon at time of posting this review.

The bottom line

Adorable dolls for preschoolers and elementary age kids; they especially shine for travel and other times small quiet toys are best!

Thank you to MGA for sending a sample set of the dolls for review purposes! I received no other compensation for this review.

These AIO diapers are really trim and the size large fits nicely (but with room to grow) on my son who is 2 and weighs about 25lbs. I really like the idea of an aio with a pocket. Besides being nice to be able to add a booster insert for my heavy wetter, I also like that during the washing process it lets water and air get under the absorbent part of the diaper to help it get clean and dry more easily!

For daytime, this diaper provided a good amount of absorbency and when I take it off, the insert I pull out is wet but the part that touches baby feels pretty dry (yeah, I touched the middle of a damp diaper just for you. You're welcome. I washed my hands well afterwards, I promise!). I really like that the part of the diaper that touches baby privates is cotton and I think the fabric feels nice to the touch. The underside of the pocket and of the insert are poly/rayon blend and don't feel particularly nice, but that never ever touches baby skin so I don't think that matters at all. There's a little bit of PUL (the waterproof outer layer) that does touch baby skin, mainly the gussets, and it feels like pretty standard PUL to me and covers less surface area than the amount of PUL touching baby skin in some of the hybrid diapers I've tried from other brands, or when using inserts or prefolds folded certain ways and tucked into a PUL cover. It doesn't bother my son's skin.

Overnight this diaper also did very well and did leak at all. The surface of the diaper and the insert were pretty damp most nights we tried it, but not enough to cause a rash even in my rash prone guy, so that was good. I will definitely consider this one of my most nighttime friendly diapers in my stash, which was a pleasant surprise!

These diapers are sized which makes it super trim and the large seems larger than most of my one-size diapers. Like any sized diaper, you'd have to basically buy a whole new stash for each size (but often people find they can skip sizes, or so I've heard from users of other brands of sized diapers). But even if you bought a new stash for each size and didnt sell any of them used or reuse them for another child(which isn't typical of how most people I know use cloth diapers), I think you'd still end up saving a ton of money vs using disposable diapers, while creating much less waste.

These diapers are currently only available in hook & loop, but I found an easy solution to the toddler+ hook & loop problem, which for me is that my toddler can (and does) undo it himself: put on a Onesies® bodysuit over it!

Luckily we already have some Gerber Onesies® bodysuits from when my older son was this age, and once I figured out how well it works, I went out and bought more! A lot of people only think of onesies for younger babies, but they actually come through a 24mo size, so for the majority of toddlers still in diapers, there'd be a Onesies® bodysuit that fits (try an extender tab if you need some extra length!)

This diaper is very easy to launder: there are laundry tabs on the back to prevent the velcro from snagging and they have worked well for me so far, and the whole thing can go in the washer and dryer (or line dry if you prefer) and got completely dry in one regular dryer cycle.

I love the colors they chose to launch with:

Two pastels and two brights. I can't wait to see what other colors (and maybe even prints?!?) they come out with in the future. Id especially love it if they keep making them coordinate with other Gerber clothes.

I paired my sample diapers with an adorable set of fireman themed Gerber Onesies® bodysuits I found at Target, but there are tons of other adorable combos with some of the currently available Gerber clothes and the AIO colors they've released! Like how cute would these combos be:

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

On Wednesdays I sometimes blog about a wrap, sling, or other baby carrier I've tried and loved, one I hope to try someday, and one way to wear a wrap, sling, or other carrier.

One I love

Uncaged is a brand new woven wrap from perennial ring sling powerhouse Maya Wrap and I actually won one from them on Facebook and chose Jade, which is jade green and white.

Maya Uncaged in Jade is a soft but very sturdy wrap made of a 50/50 blend cotton and merino wool. There's no scratchiness to it like some other woolies I've tried. It definitely needs some breaking in, but my toddler is ready for the job! Because of the wool, it requires special laundering. I personally use and recommend Eucalan laundry detergent and Eucalan wipesfor wool wraps.

It comes with a cute navy blue mesh bag (this wasn't mentioned in the listing so I don't know if it comes with all of them or if it's a bonus with just some like the pavo journals and wooden hearts and such!) that works well to store or transport it:

There's also a gigantic tag I'm not a fan of but realize is in response to new government regulations and not just that Maya wanted to do it. (As you may guess, legislation that essentially mandates giant ugly warning tags on beautiful woven wraps is definitely on the list of things crunchy conservatives hate). You're going to be seeing more and more of these from all the wrap companies, so I wouldn't hold it against Maya. Pictured with my hand for reference, but you should know I have extremely small hands for an adult. So it's even bigger than it looks here:

Ugh I need a cute toddler pic to distract me from that tag:

Uncaged also comes in three fantastic other colors: navy, light blue, and orchid.

Right side:

Wrong side:

The birds are fun and clear, but if I could change one thing, Id make the birds tossed instead of all totally vertical so that the wrap was easier to tie a variety of ways with the pattern still rightside up. Tying with the same edge always up over and over may lead to faster wear and more permacreases than if it could go either way.

Overall I really like it though, especially the vibrant color, am looking forward to breaking it in, and am super excited that Maya Wrap took the plunge into woven wraps!

I absolutely love Spangled from American wrap companyPoe Wovens. Poe Wovens is owned by a military veteran and celebrating our Stars & Stripes is near and dear to the founder's heart! There are two colorways and both are gorgeous. First up is "glory", with vibrant red, white, and blue in a blend of cotton and Tencel.

Isn't it gorgeous?!?

The other colorway, "pure" is 100% cotton with an ivory mercerized weft, and I think it's an absolutely stunning natural colored wrap: